Have you noticed that every few years there’s some new thing in popular Christianity?
All of the sudden, the conferences are all abuzz with the latest, cutting-edge insights into how, if we just do this one thing, or that five-step process, or buy into this big idea, we’ll all become better, sin less, be more fulfilled and productive, and all the problems in the Church will magically vanish.
There’s a book tour, sermon series abound, then they release a themed study Bible, a for kids version, and a special updated edition.
Eventually everyone figures out that this new thing isn’t delivering, so they move on to the next thing.
Somewhere, there’s deeply discounted copies of The Prayer of Jabez from a Christian bookstore that closed in 2002, that no one will ever buy.
The churches in the U.S. are in a panic. That’s what this is really about. We are sick. Membership is falling off. The alarm bells are ringing.
And we are looking for a miracle cure.
Any time you have a see a major health crisis, the quacks come out of the woodwork. They sell snake oil and bizarre treatment regimens to the desperate.
The quacks always set themselves up by claiming that they have an inside scoop that the doctors won’t tell you about. Cue the tobacco enema. You know the old phrase: You’re just blowing smoke up my rear end? That’s where it originated.
And did you know there’s a guy buried in a lead-lined coffin in Pittsburgh? He died from ingesting radium. It was like the 1930s version of an energy drink. It worked fine until his jaw fell off.
Hindsight shows that the panic-bought patent medicines at best do nothing, and at worst, hasten suffering and gruesome death.
Quacks capitalize on panic and create a deep discontent with the ordinary means of healthcare.
Likewise, when the churches aren’t feeling well; when they’re panicking about their health—out come the quacks to sell you what your boring old preacher at your ordinary church won’t give you. We have discovered, they say, the true way to do discipleship. The Church has been doing it wrong since the Apostles died! Just do it like we tell you, and your baptisms will explode!
We see that we have big problems. And they’re offering big solutions.
So we scoff at the ordinary, and we line up dutifully for the conferences and the books, begging: Please, take our money!
And then they give us the spiritual equivalent to a tobacco enema. ‘Course it’s uncomfortable and icky, they tell us. That’s how you know it’s working!
Nine centuries before Christ, a Syrian general named Naaman had contracted a dreaded —and fatal—skin disease. But even before the disease killed him, as it progressed he would be doomed to a sort of living death.
Naaman’s wife had an Israelite servant girl who told her about Elisha, the prophet back home in Israel, who could cure Naaman of his illness.
So Naaman went to see Elisha, and here’s what happened: Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha’s house. Then Elisha sent him a messenger, who said, “Go wash seven times in the Jordan and your skin will be restored and you will be clean” (2 Kings 5:9-10 CSB).
One would think Naaman would be happy to discover he could be healed by a few dips in ordinary water. But Naaman got angry and left, saying, “I was telling myself: He will surely come out, stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the skin disease. Aren’t Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be clean?” So he turned and left in a rage. (2 Kings 5:11-12 CSB)
Naaman was someone who was not used to walking by faith, but by sight. Moreover, he had his own expectation of how his healing would be accomplished. A nasty disease like he had should require a big production for the cure, with shouting and hand waving. Right? And why did it need to be that plain old Jordan River he washed himself in? Why couldn’t he go apply the fancier water back home?
Naaman left in a huff, despising the simple word of the man of God.
When the Church in America is sick, we often turn into Naaman. Despising the simple word of our ordinary old preachers, we would seek our remedy from the Evangelical Industrial Complex.
Since Finney’s “new measures” and Revivalism took hold during the Second Great Awakening two hundred years ago, we have come to expect that what will cure us must be exciting. Flashy. Extra.
Any suggestion that it all comes down to the ordinary means of grace—Word, baptism, Lord’s Supper, prayer—among the communion of the saints is met with either condescension or contempt.
Surely, we reason, it cannot be that! No, we have to get our lighting right in the sanctuary. We have to sing the newest songs.
Or maybe we pride ourselves on not being that superficial. What we need is more spiritual disciplines to whip ourselves into shape. We need to pursue obedience-based discipleship. Martin Luther and John Wesley prayed three hours a day? Amateurs! We’ll pray six hours a day!
Like Naaman, we have been discipled away from walking by faith. We need a flashy cure we can see. Or we want someone to tell us we can self-apply the cure with that there fancy spirituality: We need quiet times and spiritual disciplines we can do on our own—the ordinary church stuff is too ordinary.
The Naaman Syndrome might just kill us before whatever ick we have does.
Because the Naaman Syndrome encourages us to look everywhere for a cure, but where God has ordained.
The Naaman Syndrome can present in many different ways.
Winsome preachers who dispense sanctified life-hacks will cure us.
Reassessing what St. Paul really taught, redefining ancient words like faith and Gospel to make them more palatable in the twenty-first century will cure us.
Christian Nationalism will cure us.
If we can only get direct words from God, unmediated, that will cure us.
They’re all just versions of Naaman storming off, looking for a more exciting and attractive cure than the one God gave us.
By the grace of God, Naaman’s story ends happily. Because God blessed Naaman with sensible servants, and He opened Naaman’s heart to listen to them.
Thus, we read: But his servants approached and said to him, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more should you do it when he only tells you, ‘Wash and be clean’?” So Naaman went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, according to the command of the man of God. Then his skin was restored and became like the skin of a small boy, and he was clean. (2 Kings 5:13-14 CSB)
His servants’ question is poignant: if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?
If Elisha had told him to, say, bring him the foreskins of Israel’s enemies, like Saul did to David, to be healed—Naaman would’ve. If he’d been told to fast for three days, praying the entire time—he’d have done it. If Elisha had said: Naaman, climb up that steep mountain and bring me down some of the wild berries that grow there—Naaman would’ve.
As it was, he simply told Naaman: Go over to that ordinary-looking river over there, and dip yourself in the water seven times.
And that very ordinary ritual in that very ordinary water restored Naaman to health.
(And yes—there’s a baptismal overtone in this story.)
The North American Church—indeed the Western Church—is sick, and the sickness is unto death.
But instead of listening to God’s rustic spokesmen, we rush off to the conferences, revivals, and workshops to listen to those who would tell us to do some great thing.
Unsure of your standing before God? Here’s some serious spiritual disciplines!
Let me explain to you the difference between being a disciple and just being a Christian! Just being a Christian isn’t enough!
That’s how we got everything from the attractional and “seeker sensitive” church models (even though Romans 3:11 says explicitly there’s no such thing as a “seeker”); to the baptized fertility cult of Bill Gothard and the “Quiverfull” movement; and the rise of pagan-style Patriarchy rebranded as “biblical manhood and womanhood.”
St. Paul warned his young protege Timothy about these things in the early days of the Church: For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine. They’ll come to despise ordinary means of grace—Word, water, bread, wine, and prayer. Those won’t be “good enough” for them. Indeed, they denigrate the assembly of the saints, and the ministry of Word and sacrament, as mere “checklist Christianity”—all while establishing their own checklists of individual spiritual disciplines.
But according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear. What is the explosion of celebrity preachers, Christian influencers, and conferences, but multiplying teachers for themselves, according to their own desires?
They will turn away from hearing the truth, the Apostle concludes, and will turn aside to myths (2 Timothy 4:3-4 CSB). Myths like the master plan of evangelism and the homogeneous unit principle. Myths like telling the entire Protestant Reformation: Everything you know is wrong! Myths like: Oh, church buildings and duly-appointed church offices are nothing but paganism!
These new measures tend to reduce the Christian life to a technique, and give us lists of hard things to do to produce “results.” They’re really teaching us to walk by sight, not faith.
And how has no one noticed that the harder we pursue these new measures, the sicker the Church gets?
Meanwhile, the rather ordinary and unimpressive river of biblical and historic Christianity stands waiting to heal us, as it always has.
Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children, and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call (Acts 2:38-39 CSB). The proclamation of the Gospel still produces faith, and God is still in the business of moving people to repentance. The Lord still claims those who believe, in the waters of baptism, and sends His Holy Spirit to dwell in them.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer (Acts 2:42 CSB). The Apostles’ teaching = the proclamation of the Law and the Gospel and the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all (Jude 3) by called and recognized preachers. Devoted … to the fellowship. This would today = the regular gathering together of the saints, especially on the Lord’s Day. But yes, they had “small groups,” too (Acts 2:46). The breaking of bread would’ve included the Lord’s Supper. Prayer was corporate (and probably liturgical)—praying together—though of course it was accompanied by times of personal communion with God in the prayer closet (Matthew 6:6).
The mission has not changed, either. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19a CSB). For the Lord will redeem an innumerable multitude from every people group, color, culture and language (Revelation 7:9).
How do we make disciples? Preach the gospel to all creation (Mark 16:15b CSB). And what is the content of the Gospel to be preached? The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead the third day, and repentance for forgiveness of sins will be proclaimed in his name (Luke 24:46b-47a). Preach the death and resurrection of Christ, and call them to repent and be forgiven through faith in Him.
What do we do when they believe our report? We respond by baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19b). Baptism is a work of the Triune God that sanctifies the believer, clothing them with Christ (Galatians 3:27).
And once disciples are made, we shape them by teaching them to observe everything I [Jesus] have commanded you (Matthew 28:20a CSB). Again—through the ministry of the Word.
(By the way, this doesn’t mean that every disciple is busy in personal evangelism or the ministry of the Word, because God also says: Not many of you should become teachers, James 3:1. Disciples can promote the work of discipling others by sending, supporting, bearing one another’s burdens, and the like.)
We are guaranteed success, not because our techniques are so cutting edge, or our preachers are so winsome, but because Christ says: As the Father has sent me, I also send you (John 20:21 CSB). The One who sends us has been given all authority in heaven and on earth to complete His eternal purpose (Matthew 28:18). And He does not send us alone, in our own strength, but promises us: I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20 CSB).
I know, that looks like the plain old water of the Jordan River. So, with shades of Naaman we say: Oh, but the preacher at so-and-so church is better; or, But I heard a really exciting talk from a dude who baptized 170 people last year doing it this other way.
But beloved, I come to you like one of the servants who implored: if He had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more should you do it when he only tells you, ‘Wash and be clean’? I’m urging you to trust that the plain old Jordan River water will do what God says it will.
That plain old water cured Naaman of his itchy rashes and his itching ears.
And that ordinary river of the faith once for all delivered to the saints will do the same for us.
the sermonator 